CUPERTINO, California — For the first time, a big group of developers, students and media were allowed inside the very heart of Apple’s spaceship HQ during WWDC22.

The central office building, known as the Ring, is bigger than the Pentagon. Teams at Apple move in and out between other buildings as projects change — I met several ARKit engineers who recently moved in and were a bit vague on what they were working on. Interesting.

Previously, members of the media had been escorted to the Steve Jobs Theater for press events, which is another building off to the side of the sprawling Apple Park campus. However, the theater would have been much too small to fit the 1,000 developers, 350 students and hundreds of employees attending the WWDC22 keynote viewing party.

This special day for developers — an invitation-only, in-person event at this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference — marked a big step in Apple’s efforts to boost developer trust. Apple also gave attendees a first look at the new Apple Developer Center located just across the street from the Ring.

See the full gallery below for more than 80 pictures of Apple’s campus.

CUPERTINO, California — Apple is rolling out the red carpet for those lucky enough to attend its special day for developers at Apple Park on Monday. I am one of a handful of developers who will get to watch the WWDC22 keynote and Platforms State of the Union videos today “alongside Apple engineers and experts” here.

Lucky attendees who get to visit Apple Park for a special WWDC22 developer day are getting the red carpet treatment, including caviar for breakfast.

The menu for the event includes a smoked salmon and caviar bagel made from “house smoked salmon, mascarpone cream, Tobiko black caviar, Persian cucumber, [and] micro horseradish,” which asks more questions than it answers. What on earth is micro horseradish?

Apple reportedly slowed the pace at which it will require its corporate employees to return to the office. They were scheduled to be back at their desks three days a week starting later this month, but rising numbers of COVID-19 cases supposedly pushed that back.

Apple employees are still required to be in the offices two days a week.

Apple has started testing its new “Tap to Pay” iPhone feature in the Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino.

Tap to Pay allows small businesses and merchants the ability to accept payments using only their iPhones. The feature makes it possible to receive payments using Apple Pay, credit/debit cards, and other compatible digital wallets.

Monday is the day Apple requires its corporate employees to start working in the office some of the time. The pandemic era when most of them could work from home all the time is over.

But everyone doesn’t have to be back in the office five days a week starting today. This is the beginning of a transition period, after which many workers will still be able to work from home a couple days of every week.

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November 19, 2013: Apple gets final approval from the Cupertino City Council to proceed with building a massive second campus to house its growing army of workers.

Cupertino Mayor Orrin Mahoney’s simple message regarding Apple Campus 2? “Go for it.”

However, the massive structure — with an innovative circular design that will earn it the nickname “the spaceship” — remains years away from opening, despite Apple’s ambitious schedule.

Apple corporate employees must start working part-time in the office beginning on February 1, according to a company email that quickly leaked out.

But the Mac-maker has been forced to move back the date when employees to return to the office several times. It could happen again.

Apple has delayed its call for employees to return to the office by at least a month, Bloomberg reported Monday. Employees will now return to Apple Park and other locations by October at the earliest.

In June, CEO Tim Cook said that employees should get ready to return by early September. This would be according to a hybrid model in which employees would work at least three days a week in the office, and the rest working from home. But COVID-19 has seemingly (temporarily) scuppered those plans.

Having only fairly recently completed its massive Apple Park campus in Cupertino, Apple’s now “ramping up” efforts to decentralize its workforce, says Mark Gurman in his latest “Power On” column for Bloomberg.

This means reluctantly embracing the idea that not everyone wants to live and work in Silicon Valley. While Apple execs have supposedly fought against this way of thinking for years, recruitment challenges are now causing them to reassess the situation.